


Finch's First Drop

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Oxford Time Travel Universe - Connie Willis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-17
Updated: 2007-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:21:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1636211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      Many thanks to Stealthmuffin's wondrous powers of beta!<p>Written for Black-Eyed Blues</p>
    </blockquote>





	Finch's First Drop

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Stealthmuffin's wondrous powers of beta!
> 
> Written for Black-Eyed Blues

 

 

 

 

"It is, of course, a trifle, but there is nothing so important as trifles."   
-The Man With the Twisted Lip

Part 1: The Adventure of the Illustrious Client

TJ swore and smacked the side of the monitor. "It's no use. I can't build a hypothesis with one case! All I've got is a single incident, a blip on the screen."

"I appreciate your dilemma, Mr. Lewis. Mr. Dunworthy has sent this, in case it might prove useful," said Finch, pulling an overstuffed file folder out of his briefcase and setting it on the piles of paper stacked over the desk.

"TJ, not 'Mr. Lewis.' What's this?"

"I believe it is his notes from undergraduate history research, when they were first implementing controls on the net. He suggested that he and Mr. Fujisaki might have missed something."

"Not likely." TJ rubbed his eyes and stalked over to the window. The small office buzzed with the humming of multiple hard drives and the bass whirr of the mini-fridge. "Thanks for bringing them over, Finch. I'll look at them once I've tried another sim. God, I'm starving. You on your way back to Balliol, I suppose?"

Finch joined him at the window and peered up the dark street. "...Not exactly yet, Mr. Lewis--"

"TJ."

"Mm-hm. I had hoped to delay slightly; our benefactress is in the middle of paying a visit to Mr. Dunworthy, and he requested that I take this over to you before one or the other of us encounters her." TJ grinned.

"How've you escaped the draft so far?" He started rummaging through the pile of open Chinese food cartons on the coffee table. "I think I've got some mu shu left..."

"Lady Schrapnell has become considerably irritated with my perfectly legitimate requests that she fill out the appropriate forms for requisitioning supplies." Finch smiled a little wistfully, staring at the streetlights. "She does not believe that I have the 'appropriate skills' for a historian-even a draftee one."

"Nope, nothing...not even a fortune cookie...not even the curry I'd left in the fridge." TJ shook his head. "Good for you. I don't think you could pay me to go back--even if it wasn't a ten for blacks. Enough problems knowing what I'm doing in the present. Agh, I can barely think, I'm so hungry."

Out on the street, headlights glowed, then turned into the parking lot. "Oh dear." Finch cupped his hands and peered out the window. "Is there a back stairwell, Mr. Lewis?"

"Why, what--" TJ followed Finch's gesture to Lady Schrapnell disembarking from a taxi and storming into the building. "Oh no. No, no. I haven't even begun the virtual Coventry walk-through that she wanted--"

"This is not the time to panic, Mr. Lewis. Which way to the back stairwell?" TJ gestured, then blinked and grabbed his coat. Finch quickly rearranged papers on the desk, brought up the "New Coventry" flyer on the computer's desktop, tucked Dunworthy's notes under a programming language textbook, and followed TJ into a roomful of humming servers.

"I can't leave!" whispered TJ while he tinkered with a crashbar marked 'Emergency Only.' "I need to run another sim, and come up with something to tell Dunworthy, and finish that walk-through..."

Finch appraised the undergraduate's twitching hands. "We need somewhere to go...and you need to eat, Mr. Lewis...is there a restaurant or cafe nearby, somewhere not too obvious or accessible? The ones near Mr. Dunworthy's office are too familiar to her; she has tracked me down there twice now."

TJ blinked again. "Of course! This way!" He popped the crashbar and hurried down the stairs, past the ground level, to the basement, then pushed aside a notice board in the hallway. Behind it, a poorly-lit corridor led into the darkness. Finch could hear faint techno music. "Awkward time to ask a chap to dinner, Finch," said TJ as he headed down the steam tunnel. "But there's no way she'll find us here." Finch harrumphed at the dinner remark, even as his curiosity was piqued by the well-tended state of the steam tunnel.

It extended far past the boundaries of the building where TJ had commandeered an office. TJ led them past two boiler rooms, a large computer lab filled with unhappy-looking students frantically typing in the flickering fluorescent light, and a dance party that was the source of the techno. Finally, they climbed a flight of stairs to an exit marked "Deliveries Only," which opened onto an alley facing an industrial-looking building with a featureless steel door. TJ bounded across the road and swiped an access card next to the door, then threw open the door to reveal what seemed to be a pub.

"What is this place?" asked Finch, as a harried pair in labcoats pushed past them towards the chrome bar. The room had once been a laboratory, and had been converted into a multi-level pub with Bunsen burners providing flickery blue light to each bar table and the day's news scrolling on a wall readout behind the bar. TJ pointed up at a sign swinging over the door they'd just entered. LEDs arranged in Gothic font proclaimed this to be "Ye Olde Flask and Modem."

"Never been here? Let me guess, you never pulled an all-nighter in the labs. A friend introduced me last year during finals. Hey, Morris-" he addressed the bartender, whom Finch dimly recognized as an astrophysics graduate, "plate of chips and a bucket of vindaloo, plus a pint of Old Peculier. What'll you have, Finch?"

Finch looked around at the clientele, receding ever so slightly into his overcoat. "A glass of wine?" Morris raised an eyebrow, then pulled out a bottle labeled "Cheap White Wine" and started pouring. "I wonder if she's stopped looking yet..."

"Oh, no you don't. You talked me into taking a break, you're taking one too. Besides, I need to talk out this problem a little more, and I can't do that with anyone else in the bar." TJ tossed his jacket onto a table in the back. "Work hard, play hard, work harder. That's the motto of Ye Flask, and we're going to stick with it."

Finch took off his coat and settled into the overstuffed wingback chair. The music was a little quieter here, and the nearest patrons were engaged in a fierce argument about operating systems. Morris set down the wine and beer, both poured into tall beakers. "I suppose you are right, Mr. Lewis; as Sherlock Holmes once said, 'Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person.' And we can hardly let this information be widely known as yet."

"Mm, you're a Holmes fan too? Nice to meet a fellow Sherlockian." TJ took a big swig of Old Peculier and scarfed the last chip. Finch could have sworn there had been more chips a few seconds ago, but now only a forlorn grease-stained basket remained. "Go over the facts again," said TJ, his mouth full of vindaloo. "One. There are safeguards on the net to prevent significant objects from coming through."

Finch sipped the wine and avoided making a face, then responded. "Two. Mr. Dunworthy's suspicions aside, the net has prevented intentional discontinuities even before the protocols were put into place--such as Darby and Gentilla's attempts to loot the past."

"Three. Only objects from this century can return to this century via the net. Four. Kindle brought through a living being and it was successfully returned."

"Probably returned, anyway. Mr. Henry was extremely disoriented when we sent him there."

"No, I mean the cat went back at all. The net opened, right? That's what we've got to work with." He groaned and pushed away the empty plate. "That's all we've got. A net that shouldn't let through the thing it did, even when there aren't any safeguards." He threw up his hands theatrically and recited: "Data! data! data!"

"--I cannot make bricks without clay!" Finch completed the quotation. "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches, right?"

"I loved the stories. Here's to Mrs. Hudson!"

"And to Mycroft!"

"And to the Second Mrs. Watson!"

"And to The Woman!"

"And tho' the world explode, these two survive, and it is always eighteen-ninety-five!" they recited in unison, then broke up into laughter. "It's rare for people to know the Vincent Starrett poem. One of my favorites, truly."

"We could sure use that kind of help here. Not much for detective work, are we?"

Finch finished his wine, furrowing his brow. "Well, let's try it. Eliminate the impossible, and what remains must be the answer. The net doesn't let significant objects through: not plague viruses, not scraps of paper, only things like smoke and dirt."

"Which must mean...that the cat was an insignificant object?" TJ's eyes lit up. "This doesn't make any sense. Cats were supposed to be troublesome animals, capable of changing events, right? Dick Whittington and all that?" He reached for another chip and realized the basket was empty. "Morris! Can we get another plate of chips, and maybe some of those jalapeno things? And another pint?"

Morris came over with a second foaming beaker, a test tube in a stand, and another basket of chips. "With your usual Red Bull chaser. Anything new for you?" he asked Finch as he cleared the remnants of vindaloo.

"Mm? Umm...no more wine, thank you. Could I get a cappuccino, perhaps?"

"Espresso machine's on the fritz. You could get a Brownian Motion. It's...like coffee."

"One of those, then. Cats were certainly significant, TJ," he continued as Morris returned to the bar. "They were worshiped as godlike in Egypt, and there are thousands of beautiful Japanese prints with them. The one Miss Kindle brought back was mostly asleep, but it was still quite an animal. Graceful, elegant lines, very sleek and regal. And they hummed when you petted them." Finch closed his eyes and remembered the contents of the covered basket. Although Kindle had described a poor forlorn drowning beast, Arjumand had been warm and dry by the time he picked her up. She had even hummed a little when he transported her into the basket, which seemed to be the only sign she was alive. She was the very image of a Bast statuette or a Matisse painting.

"I wonder what that must have been like. I had a rabbit as a child, and it never liked being cuddled. I was always amazed at how soft it was." TJ speared a chip and dunked it in a plastic cup of sauce. "But we're committing a set fallacy here." Finch, lost in reverie, didn't respond till TJ poked him with the fork. "Cats as a set are significant: entire species. Cats within the set may or may not be significant. Maybe this one had something that made her especially nonsignificant. Is there another cat at the drop, maybe a twin?"

"They didn't have twins, they had litters. No, this one was specially named and specially dear to one of the contemps." Finch pondered glumly. "No data again. We're not getting anywhere with the specific situation. We need something different, but similar enough..."

"I told you, it's close enough to coffee," said Morris, setting down a burbling brown creation crowned with a swizzle stick in the shape of the Greek letter sigma. "And here's your something different, TJ: habanero poppers. Probably spicy enough even for you. Also, you should know that the Prokaryote Liberation Front will be starting their Kamikaze Karaoke in a little while. It's ABBA night. Just so you're warned."

Finch regarded the drink with mingled horror and fascination. "What...is it?"

"Don't know, never had the courage to order it. But it's close to coffee, right? Like what we're looking for. Some kind of analogy for the cat...or some analogical situation to what we're dealing with for the entire sim. God, if we only could come up with something like that! I don't know a fraction of what Fujisaki does about time travel, but if I had some kind of situation with enough variables that I could tinker with, something to program, then maybe..." TJ chomped down grimly on a habanero popper and promptly began a coughing fit.

"Your rabbit. Think of your rabbit. You cared about it, fed it, had it in the family. When did it stop being significant to you?"

Wheezing, TJ gasped, "Oh, I don't know...it meant a lot to us for a long time...Probably only when it died." He stopped coughing and blinked.

"When it died." They looked at each other and the wheels clicked into place. "Dying animals decay into their components. There's nothing significant about dust."

"If the cat was dying, the net would recognize it as parts, not a being." TJ's look of excitement was replaced by one of horror. "But we sent it back alive...Oh, Finch, this is a hell of a hypothesis."

Finch's eyes were burning brightly. "I think I know how we can test it."

With what he would later regard as inadequate self-preservation instinct, Finch reached out and sipped the Brownian Motion.

PART 2: A Touch of the Dramatic

The early dawn light crept into the office window. Finch was crouched over a stack of paperwork, humming faintly to himself and filling things out in triplicate. A series of empty coffee cups that had once contained something like coffee stood at attention on the desk to his right. TJ stood up from the computer and stretched. "The history book on the shelf...is always repeating itself..." he hummed along with Finch.

Finch wasn't entirely certain how he'd ended up on stage last night. But that wasn't important. Right now, the plan was all so clear-perhaps it was the fresh morning air, or the invigorating evening with Mr. Lewis, or the resonance of the Holmesian discussion lending their solutions some of the Master's keenness of thought.

He remembered volunteering for the karaoke microphone, sometime after the third Brownian, and the random-song algorithm had brought up one of his favorites, "Waterloo." Midway through the first chorus TJ's face had lit up, he'd started scribbling on the bar napkins, and then he'd jumped up on the bar to join Finch for the finish. A perfect performance, especially after a series of ill-prepared, ill-rehearsed attempts at "S.O.S." and "Super Trooper" from the PLF members.

And it was at that point that Finch had understood what it would take to provide the necessary data for TJ in the timeframe required. It was all so clear. What being a historian required was preparation and study, and a careful, foolproof plan developed with full knowledge of the situation.

They'd spent the rest of the night hurrying back and forth between the office and Ye Flask as TJ searched for more history material and Finch hunted through online document archives, fueled by more habanero poppers and at least five more Brownians.

The printer beeped and spat out a series of intricate grey blobs. "The Waterloo sim's complete and ready for testing! I horked the data from an elaborate reconstruction that got put together in the twenties, during the height of the anachronism societies. We used this scenario in my primary school classes, and I thought it was the dreariest thing...never thought I'd ever need to know Wellington's defenses! It's perfect for the sim: complex interactions, chaos of natural and human origin, and all kinds of ways for a historian to mess things up. Finally--data!" He perused the printouts, and peered over them at Finch's scribbles. "How are you going to get a frockcoat? Warder will skin you alive if you ask her for one."

The look in Finch's eyes bespoke years of editing grant reports, financial records, and tedious accounting material. "Discretionary funding, TJ. Lady Schrapnell has made it clear that money is no object in this pursuit, and I happen to have conserved a fair amount for emergencies, accidents, and discretionary spending. And--" he pulled out a handheld and began looking up a number, "--I have been able to arrange various useful favors for the assistants to the Theatrical Guild in the last two years. If I give them carte blanche and a suit size, they will be able to procure the needed materials in an hour."

This, thought Finch to himself, is why he was ideally suited to historical work in moments of crisis. Inadequate preparation is the source of heartbreak. And I have listened to numerous lectures on Victorian etiquette; ninety percent of the subliminals is already learned, and the remaining ten percent can be learned in a matter of hours. It's really all so simple.

"I can't believe we're doing this. Dunworthy will never--"

"Mr. Dunworthy will sign off on this morning's paperwork without a problem. No new drop needs to be arranged; I will use the one originally set for Muchings End when we planned on the early-childhood visit. I have also located a record of felines being drowned at a particular time; there will be no need for me to spend additional time in the past."

"Yes, but..." A hunted look passed over TJ's face.

"Consider, TJ, that even in the worst case scenario, I will have given you your first hard experimental data. And in the best case, we may have identified a new scientific principle for the net."

"I suppose..."

"And now, I believe I must hurry to catch Mr. Dunworthy before he has received his first cup of coffee." Finch picked up the last of the Brownian Motions neatly lined up on the desk and drained the last swallow. "I will see you at noon tomorrow, TJ. Bring some kind of container, and warm milk, I believe--and may your Waterloo be your victory!"

* * *

Dunworthy gritted his teeth and held the mobile away from his ear. "No, Lady Schrapnell, Mr. Henry is not on vacation. He is conducting additional research on the bishop's bird stump. No, I cannot bring him back here for regular updates for the morning news programs." He tapped his pen on the desk, doodling a series of squares in the corner of a drop release form. "Not to the best of my knowledge, Lady Schrapnell..."

A drop release form?

Finch had handed him the morning's paperwork, along with his agenda, along with a series of forms for signatures. Dunworthy didn't remember a release form being mentioned...He buzzed for Finch, then looked into the front office and found it empty. Ah yes. Finch had said that he would be out of the office assisting TJ Lewis with a promising bit of research on the problem of nonsignificant objects for the next day. He'd hurried out with his usual air of grace-under-fire, having taken care of the day's tasks already by eight-thirty. The requisition forms for the next week had been prepared in advance in case anything came up, and Finch had printed out the agenda for the noon meeting...

...A drop release form?

The coffee machine was broken, so Dunworthy had been pretty bleary, and he'd gotten the first of a string of calls from Lady Schrapnell just as Finch handed over the stack. And he'd signed them one after the other. With the handheld continuing to screech in his ear, Dunworthy looked at the full stack of forms and flipped through them. Filing readjustment request form...discretionary funding reassignment...review of minutes from the choir-robe planning committee...requisition for additional ball-point pens in the satellite office...drop release form. For one (1) male historian, training waived under provision thirty-five (35) of the Coventry Cathedral Project (subsection B, amendment 12, re: post hoc deputization of additional historians required by funder's suggestions). To the Victorian era. Purpose of research: assistance with nonsignificant object hypotheses. Co-investigator: Mr. Lewis.

Oh, dear.

* * *

The key, thought Finch as he adjusted his frockcoat, was preparation. Hadn't he seen new historian after new historian returning with the same stunned, baffled expression once the Schrapnell project had begun? And all of them sent out with little preparation, next to no knowledge of the time and mores to which they were being sent. Mr. Henry had only been the most recent and the most egregious of the lot.

What you wanted for a historian was not the first person that happened to cross Lady Schrapnell's path; you wanted someone detail-oriented. Someone with meticulous preparation. And you'd need even more than that for the ideal historian...

Finch thought of his own flat; the wall of Victoriana, the carefully restored 1898 fireplace and mantel, the neatly arranged silver and cut glass with a decanter of tokay on the sideboard. You'd need an enthusiast. And someone with a sense of...his mental gaze turned toward the complete collection of Wodehouse neatly stored in the glass-fronted cabinets...the correct roles to play.

Yes: enthusiasm to the point of near-obsession; a sense of the correct dramatis personae; and above all, adequate meticulous preparation. That was really all you needed.

Warder barked a few more orders at the intern from the theatrical guild, then turned back to the console and hit the last codes. The veil of the net descended around Finch, and he closed his eyes in anticipation of the day's adventure.

PART 3: The Curious Incident of Finch in the Night-Time

Preparation. That was what it took, right? And Finch had had so much of it already prepared. The Harringtons were visitors to the area during this winter, and there were records that indicated they had hired an assortment of local servants in something of a hurry. Most of all, Annabelle Harrington's diary had mentioned being woken by a small ruckus involving removal of the housecat's offspring on the night of the twentieth of December. The perfect situation.

Finch would drop in at dawn, show up early that morning at Childers Hall, secure a temporary position, remove the felines from their watery fate, and disappear, continuing the Harrington's bad streak of luck in servants. By morning he'd be a butler, by midday welcomed into the warm graces of the jovial downstairs servants, and by midnight the linchpin in TJ's research. And after the first distressing discovery (that well-made theatrical frockcoats are designed for use under hot lights, not for light snowfall and freezing temperatures), everything had gone smoothly. He'd been hired almost immediately upon arrival.

By nine a.m. the headache had set in.

By ten he had witnessed two screaming matches between the housemaids and the cook, and the stableboy had been caught sneaking a silver tray out of the house.

By noon, the lack of sleep was starting to hit with a vengeance, and it was only by chance that he avoided correcting Mr. Harrington whenever he referred to him as "our new butler, Fitch."

By one, he had silver polish spilled down one side of his trousers as a result of an unfortunate collision with young Euphronia Harrington as she and her three brothers played "mutiny on the Khyber" in the hallways. Miss Harrington had wailed like a banshee, but quieted when Finch brought out a sugar plum from the kitchen. Then her brothers had started wailing for their own bribes.

By two, he had raised his voice with the new stable boy, who had spent most of his first hours of employment inspecting the comfort of the hayloft.

By two-fifteen, he was offering extensive apologies to Mrs. Harrington for disturbing the inaugural Ladies Caroling Auxiliary Society meeting as they passed by the stable.

By four, he had sustained injuries as a result of another collision. This time, he'd been descending the rear stairs with two tea trays, a set of collar and cuffs to prepare, a pair of dress boots to black, and a cold water-bottle when a gray cat decided it was time to sprint across the top of the second flight. Finch's first encounter with Mistress Squiffles therefore nearly broke his neck as he toppled down the stairs in a confusion of crockery, icy water, and clothing.

By five, he'd managed to salvage plans for dinner after heated negotiations with both sides in the housemaid/cook detente.

By five-thirty, his second encounter with Mistress Squiffles had convinced him that preserving this particular feline's gene pool might not be ideal. Half of the Cornish hens that had been prepared for Mrs. Harrington's dinner party had been nibbled to an unfit state, and the fish course was no more. After general panic had descended, Finch had observed Mistress Squiffles in an inert state on the ottoman, looking simultaneously pleased with herself and perfectly innocent.

By six, Mr. Harrington had taken to addressing him as "Good show, Fitch!" with excessive bonhomie.

By seven, the headache had been reclassified as a full-on migraine; the amateur violin stylings of Master Edmund Harrington, which were being performed for a group of presumably admiring party guests, were not helping. Finch wondered if removing one's own ears was, under the right circumstances, justifiable. Especially during "The Holly and the Ivy."

By eight, Finch seemed to be getting the hang of things. The kitchen staff had saved him one of the less-nibbled hens, and the new stableboy had replaced the steady stream of muttered invective that had been his conversational oeuvre with sullenness interspersed with occasional oaths. The Harringtons, except for the exceptionally sensitive Miss Annabelle, were more or less pleased with his presence, even if they had his name wrong. Yes, he believed he was finally in his proper position, a dutiful servant to a joyful house, repository of the propriety of the era, bearer of the true dignity that resides in all who stand and wait. Ah, he thought a second later. So this is what time-lag feels like.

* * *

At one-thirty, Finch slumped back into the chair in his room. The headache had subsided to a dull roar. His feet hurt. His eyes felt as if sand had been pouring out of his tear ducts. His back hurt, and something had shifted in his left knee not long after the adventure on the back staircase. With a groan, he pushed his boots off one after the other, and toppled into the bed.

Blessed rest, that knits up the raveled sleeve of care...Finch began to drift away. Somewhere, in the hallway, someone was talking loudly...

...about "finding them." What? Finch blinked, and the gentle cloud that had descended over his mind gradually lifted. "We found them," said Merrick, the new stableboy. "They were all the way in the back of the hayloft. I've got 'em in a sack--better get rid of 'em now, they're just about walking around--"

Finch shook himself awake. The cats. Merrick was about to get rid of the cats. He'd have to offer to do the drowning himself--

"Naow, I can get it," said Merrick in reply to a whispered question, his voice echoing down the stairs. "Just wanted to tell the house." That wouldn't work. Finch stuffed his feet back into the boots, then slapped his forehead and swore aloud. He'd changed trousers due to the polish--he'd have to change back first--then put the boots on--then run after Merrick--

Re-dressed, Finch clattered down the stairs and out into the cold, swearing under his breath. Behind him, he heard Annabelle Harrington's petulant teenaged voice complaining about servants stomping around under her window in the middle of the night. Which way was the mill pond?

* * *

An observer positioned near the mill pond, perhaps a historian from a far-distant future, would have seen Merrick stomping through the new-fallen snow with a burlap sack in one hand, swinging it back and forth and humming tunelessly. The full moon glowed in the sky above, and its reflection was shattered in the pond as Merrick tossed the sack and its mewling contents into the water. He stomped back towards the house, singing a song that consisted entirely of filthy limericks.

A patient observer would have noticed what Merrick did not: a black-clad figure, breathless, with his pants half undone and clothes that were completely inappropriate for the weather, hurrying out of the shadows next to the mill. The figure scrambled over the snow as the last of the ripples on the pond died away, made a noise that might have been a prayer or a whimper, then dove into the water. A truly astute observer, upon seeing the same figure climb out of the pond with the sack in hand, would have noticed that the curses he uttered would not be invented for another half-century.

* * *

Finch crouched under the aspidistra, more icy water dripping off the leaves and down his back. Frost was already forming on his hair. How long had it been since he'd left the house? How often was the net set to open? The minutes ticked by. Maybe Merrick had tossed something else instead of the felines. Had he even grabbed the right sack?

The sack. He'd have to get rid of the sack in case it was significant, wouldn't he? He opened the bag. Inside, five squirming bodies wiggled weakly around a brick that had weighted the sack. He gently lifted them out, tucking two into his waistcoat pocket and two into his frockcoat. The smallest one, a yellowish striped thing, rested on his palm.

What was this? The bedraggled shape bore no resemblance to the plump Mistress Squiffles that had purportedly borne it. Nor was it anything like the graceful statues in the Egyptian wing of the British museum, or the rounded white shapes in the Hiroshige prints in his flat. This was stunted, ungraceful, unproportioned, cold--

Too cold. It was still breathing, but Finch could feel the tiny heartbeat getting slower and slower. Still the net didn't appear. He and TJ had failed, and that would be it. The net would not open until he held nothing but nonsignificant objects, and he would have to stand here and freeze while each little heart stopped in his hands.

The last of the time-lag's romanticism and the very last of the Brownian Motion's enthusiasm left him and the cold settled into his bones. Finch stifled a sob and cradled the kitten close.

And the shimmer of the net opened around him, pulling him back to 2057, as the small lemon-colored animal in his hands went "meep" and batted feebly at his thumbs.

The net curtains lifted, and Dunworthy and TJ were standing there--the latter with a box wrapped in an electric blanket and a bowl of steaming milk, and the former with a stunned expression. "Finch!" shouted Dunworthy. "What part of 'simulation only' didn't you understand that you felt compelled to test the whole theory of nonsignificance?"

Finch felt the heat of the room around him and smiled, straightening up and holding out the first kitten to TJ. "I would hardly call them nonsignificant, sir."

 


End file.
